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Stand by your land : Kerrianne Cox faced down past to lead her community, writes Rosemary Neill

26 August 2006 - TWO years ago, Kerrianne Cox felt the pull of home in her veins: a cherished aunt was dying, the ochre countryside was calling and the grandfather who had groomed her as a future leader kept asking: "When's that girl coming back?"

Although Cox's singing career was flourishing, she returned to her mob at the tiny West Australian community of Beagle Bay in the Kimberley, the same community she had fled a decade before. "I would have died in this community if I had stayed. How can you grow and break the cycle if everybody else around you is in the cycle?" asks Cox, who was sexually abused as a child.

Her break with the cycle of poverty and despair that still disfigures many remote indigenous communities could hardly have been more emphatic. Born in a lean-to shed bordering a football oval, she has cemented an impressive career as a singer-songwriter and has been bombarded with awards and accolades.

In 2003, Prime Minister John Howard awarded her a Centenary Medal for services to Australia. In the same week we conducted this interview, the PM sent Cox, 31, a letter congratulating her on her third and latest CD, Return to Country.

In 2004, Cox went to South Africa as an ambassador for the Australian high commission and ended up being profiled in a documentary alongside bushmen and women of the Kalahari.

In 1996, she edged out hardcore rockers to become the inaugural winner of Western Australia's Next Big Thing music competition and in 2003 she won an Australian Live Music award. Last year, she netted the National Aboriginal Independence Day of Celebration artist of the year award. This year she has been nominated for the artist of the year gong at the Deadlys, the annual awards that celebrate indigenous achievement in music, sport, entertainment and the wider community. (These awards will be decided next month in Sydney.)

The Australia Council has described Cox as "one of Australia's premier indigenous artists" and compared her technique with Billie Holiday, Joan Armatrading and Tracy Chapman.

From Womadelaide to Washington, Cox has won over crowds with her six-string guitar, generous humour and soothing melange of folk, blues, soul and country.

Next month she is to perform at an exhibition of Australian indigenous women's art at Washington's National Museum of Women in the Arts. It is believed to be the first exhibition of its kind in the US. Cox, who speaks in the rolling, Creole accent common around Beagle Bay, says she "feels pretty honoured that they have selected me (to perform there)".

As well as maintaining an international music career from one of Australia's smallest towns - Beagle Bay's population is 183 - Cox has taken on another, arguably more demanding role. She is the chairwoman of the Beagle Bay community and is helping other indigenous people climb out of the pit of despondency into which she could have fallen.

Cox was elected in late 2004, becoming the first woman to lead her community in 30 years of self-management. When she took on the role, she was well aware of the community's deep and disturbing problems, from its "underbelly of incest and suicide" to corruption and mismanagement of public money, to overlap and inefficiency on the part of government agencies. Faced with sometimes violent local opposition and intimidation, she pushed for Beagle Bay to be declared a "community in crisis". She wrote to Amanda Vanstone, then minister for indigenous affairs, asking for help. She got it (and still has a soft spot for Vanstone). Cox wrote earlier this year: "It was clear to everyone (I believe) that I wasn't going to stop until I had evidence from government that it was going to do something real and lasting in Beagle Bay ... I also took no prisoners with my own people."

A forthright woman, she told her constituents to take responsibility for their lives and to "stop making excuses" for their various predicaments. A year after Cox's election, federal and state governments signed off on a co-ordinated strategy for the troubled community.

Two years on, management of Beagle Bay's only shop has been reformed; there is a fairer distribution of local housing and, for the first time, detectives specialising in child sex abuse are to be stationed in the region.

Some locals were suspicious of Cox, even though she takes no sitting fees for her leadership role.

Cox says they were "frightened of the truth; of acknowledging we were in crisis".

"It has been hard being challenged by my own people. There have been times when I've had to protect myself from violence," she adds.

Soon after she returned home, premature death stalked Cox's family, as it does many indigenous families. In 2004, her aunt died of cancer, aged 43. Last August, her younger sister, who had also been sexually abused as a child, committed suicide. She was 26 and left behind a young son.

Cox, the eldest of 11 children, knew what her sister's pain felt like. She was just six when she was sexually abused by a male relative. She took her alleged abuser to court recently. Although her evidence was found to be credible, the time lapse and a lack of corroborating evidence meant that he walked free. Still, she kept moving forward. In a long phone interview from Beagle Bay, Cox reveals that she told herself long ago: "I can allow the pain and grief to eat me up or I can heal myself."

For all of Beagle Bay's problems, for all of her personal scars, Cox remains deeply attached to her family and community. Indeed, Return to Country, released last June, is a kind of hymn to this vast region of big skies, red earth and pindan bushes; many of the CD's tracks are shot through with sunlight, lyricism and tributes to indigenous culture. "My songs have been my greatest friend," she says. "They saved my life, really, being a victim of child sexual abuse and being raised in a low-quality community."

She credits the grandfather who raised her, "Lulu" Paul Cox, with much of her resilience and success. Paul Cox is a respected elder who once met Pope John Paul II in Alice Springs. He has some Filipino ancestry and apparently jokes that he is a "proud Abo-Asian".

Although she has won a truckload of awards, Cox has never sought a mainstream recording deal because "that would be like selling mysoul".

"You have to work with people who respect your sovereign space ... I am an independent business person and a free spirit."

Even within the Aboriginal music industry, she says, there is a club to which she has never belonged. But then, she doesn't want to become part of any "Koori Kmart".

Cox may be ferociously independent-minded about her music but she is deadly pragmatic when it comes to working with governments. One seasoned observer of remote communities says she has attracted extensive assistance for Beagle Bay from governments because of her clean leadership and willingness to strike constructive deals.

Cox declares that "Johnny Howard" is making reconciliation work by striving to end the tyranny of welfare and maladministration in indigenous affairs. Of his refusal to apologise to the stolen generations, she says: "Sorry is just one lousy word with no action." As a performer, she still gets a thrill from the knowledge that "I've still got it; that I can still move and woo a crowd". For her, writing songs is a kind of spirituality and a means of reconciling black and white Australia.

"It's not just Aboriginal people who come with me. I want white people to come with me, too."

The Deadlys will be held at the Sydney Opera House on September 21.

Source: The Australian

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